DESCRIPTION: (Applicant's Description) The broad, long-term objective of
this proposal is to increase our understanding of how adolescent's
subjective experience of early trials of cigarette smoking impacts upon
their future smoking behavior. The Specific Aims are 1) to increase our
understanding of the subjective and objective microcontexts of adolescent
smoking and how they vary by age and gender, 2) to describe adolescents'
patterns of acceleration and deceleration in the frequency, intensity and
regularity of smoking, and 3) to determine which micro- and macro-level
factors differentiate youth who eventually either escalate, maintain, or
discontinue their smoking. The research design follows youths ranging
widely in their smoking behavior (from recent tryers to weekend smokers),
cross-sectioned by grade (8th- 10th), at semi-annual intervals for a period
of 18 months. During each data collection period adolescents will provide
1) intensive naturalistic self-reports on their daily experience and smoking
behavior for one week and 2) retrospective questionnaire and interview data.
Employing hand-held computer self-monitoring devices, we will use a
combination of random time-sampling and event sampling while adolescents go
about their daily lives to capture both smoking episodes and comparison
events. This ecologically valid yet systematically collected data,
Capturing thousands of moments nested in 240 adolescents, can provide a
heretofore unseen picture of the subjective experience of adolescent smokers
and examine its relationship to changes in smoking patterns. Findings from
this study have potential for informing both smoking cessation and
preventive interventions for adolescents.